The problem might be hard, but the solution can be easy. That’s a central insight of a solutions-focused approach. If we get too tangled up in thinking about the problem, analysing it and talking about it, we might miss the simplicity of doing something different – which may well be unrelated to the problem in any obvious way, yet improve things quickly. A nice example here, in this Guardian Weekend column by Oliver Burkeman.​

Our opening words inevitably contain assumptions, destiny-filled assumptions which can shape the rest of the conversation.What if we start with ’What’s the problem?'. That assumes a problem, which we’ll now have to talk about and then try to solve.

In our Solutions Focus practice we like to say that our clients and customers are the experts, by which we acknowledge that they know their lives and work better than we ever can, and are therefore best placed to decide how to use their resources to solve their problems. So, if the client is the expert, how do we let them know that, while still adding value in our job as coach, therapist or workshop leader? How do we empower clients in practice during a workshop or a coaching session? ​

​In many forms of coaching and therapy, the practitioner has a plan. The course of the conversation depends relatively little on what the client wants. That makes it predictable and thus easy for the coach. But is the comfort of the coach or the therapist (rather than the client) the goal of the session?

​In taking a solutions-focused approach, you do have to listen to the client, and the questions you ask depend a great deal on what the client has to say.We have a favourite SF training exercise, in which you practice with a partner and your next question must include a significant word or phrase from the previous answer. So the pattern shifts from ‘Question, answer, question’ to ‘Answer, question, answer’.

In SF coaching sessions, we start by asking what the client wants. That’s the plan, and that’s as far as the plan goes. The rest depends upon the answer you get and whatever is needed to get a more detailed description of what’s wanted, descriptions of resources and descriptions of progress.

And the value of that? These questions will produce change. And they will keep you as the coach in the moment and on your toes.

​Sometimes a client in a coaching session is not ready to talk about what they want, their goals or even to have a sense of what a better future might be like for them. That may appear to scupper the conversation if you are intent on goal-finding as your first coaching step. But there are other ways to proceed.

One option is to ask your client, ‘What are you already doing that's useful?’ to gain pointers towards from their current activities that might plausibly form part of a more fruitful future.

Another is to start with highlights from the past - proud achievements, better periods in their life or their work - to get a sense of what’s important to them, their talents and their experiences.

Then, when the time is right, you can have a more informed conversation about what’s wanted in the future.

​​How do you know what to say when a client answers your question? Most of the time you did not know what your client was going to say. That was why you asked the question.Knowing what to do next at that precise moment has a great deal to do with paying attention to language. And what we say will depend on our assumptions.

​A participant on a recent webinar cited a study he’d heard about, saying that visualising a goal can be counter-productive to one’s motivation. Apparently, there’s a danger of feeling that you’ve already accomplished your objective, so you put less effort into doing it ‘again’ for real.

For a solutions-focused practitioner, this seems more about the danger of extrapolating too much from a single research project than about the value of visualisation. There’s obvious value for an individual or a team in the clarity gained by visualising the goal. The depiction of the Future Perfect in detail also provides useful signs by which to measure progress. And it encourages reflecting on the benefits of the various aspects of the goal – which again will provoke and boost motivation. I’m not sure how you would gain those benefits without somehow visualising what’s wanted in glorious detail.

Nor is the Future Perfect visualisation the end of the typical coaching process. First, in a detailed articulation of a vision, we not only see it, we speak it, unearthing more and more detail. And then we also explore resources and consider the next small steps. Those additional elements should be more than enough to avoid any loss of motivation.

​Many clients have difficulty in letting go of their problem. It’s not surprising. They have lived with the problem for a while; the problem is giving them trouble and it’s worthy of respect. Yet the solution-focused practitioner pops up to say the problem may have nothing to do with the solution – and remind them that it’s the solution that the client wants. That may make sense logically, but from the client’s perspective that can be tough to accept emotionally.

We are all familiar with tricky conversations in our organisations - the ones you put off for as long as possible or perhaps never have at all. But suppose you could handle these conversations in the best way imaginable, what difference would that make?What difference would it make it to you, to your team and to your organisation? Each conversation has an impact on your ultimate results, as there is an inevitable logical thread between you, your team and your organisation’s performance.

​I was running a two-day course in Facilitation Skills, teaching a bunch of tips and tools, especially those neat processes into which you can put pretty much any content.This particular format was a series of rotating pairs. It was near the end of the programme, so I quickly made up a few questions which each set of paired partners could ask each other.

The activity ran smoothly and the participants raced back to their chairs to make notes. ‘What were those questions we just asked?’, they demanded. ‘What do you remember them to be?’, I parried - still in facilitator mode.

It so happened that my questions were all flavoured with a solutions focus. That’s because SF is the way that I think, even though in terms of the format we were learning the wording of the questions was irrelevant...